This is a blog for chess fans by a chess fan. I enjoy winning as much as anyone else, and I've had a reasonable amount of success as a competitor, but what keeps me coming back to the game is its beauty. And that, primarily, is what this site will be about! All material copyrighted.

Saturday, March 26, 2005

This Week's ChessBase Show: Something VERY Special

In 1987, when I was living in Las Vegas, Filipino GM Eugenio Torre came to town to visit some friends and give a simul. When the time came, Torre & friends came to the site in a van, a van I must have walked past several times. Guess who was inside? As I was to discover - several days later, unfortunately - a certain famous chess player now living in Iceland was hiding inside.

My local Filipino friends felt bad that they couldn't tell me that Fischer had been staying at their place, so to make up for it they shared another bombshell, albeit one which I was not to tell anyone else. I agreed, but it seems to me that 18 years is long enough.

Thus, for my ChessBase show for the week of March 28-April 3, I will present a hitherto secret game played between Fischer and Anatoly Karpov. In 1976, a year after receiving the title by default, Karpov met with Fischer in the Philippines (see Russians vs. Fischer, compiled by Dmitry Plisetsky and Sergey Voronkov, Chess World Ltd. 1994 (366-367), hoping to arrange an unofficial world championship match. Fischer was interested, but the USSR Sports Committee would have none of it and the proposal came to nought.

In the wake of the failed negotiations, however, Fischer and Karpov played a number of informal games before returning to their respective countries, and my Filipino friends were kind enough to let me see one of them. And so 18 years after my discovery, and 29 years after the game itself, that game will become available to a wider audience - at least as long as Frederic Friedel of ChessBase allows me to present it!

As always, directions for seeing the show can be found here, and a list of previous shows here.

8 Comments:

This actually sounds like you are NOT kidding, but I find it VERY hard to believe. And, of course, I am in deep expectation as to who wins too! But, does anyone? Oh, Dennis... I am at a loss for words... I will be tuning in, nonetheless, to see if you got the go ahead. Cheers!

Your idea of an April Fool's joke is sick and cruel and not funny in the least. There are a lot of people for whom the Fischer-Karpov non-match of 1975 is the worst tragedy in chess history. That the two greatest players ever to then did not play a single game, never once met at the board, is hurtful to those who care about chess, and is literally grieved still. You don't joke about such things. Still less do you joke about them at a time when the chess world seems to be rocked by bombshell news every day--Kasparov retiring, Fischer in public--and there is a 1989-like feeling in the air that the world is changing before your eyes, empires are falling and anything is possible, and maybe, just maybe, things didn't turn out so desperately wrong in 1975.

You just don't joke about such things.

You may as well joke about the World Trade Center. "Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Jones? Your son, George, really didn't die on September 11. He was just missing, and we've finally found him and would love to reunite you with him. Ha ha! April Fool!" Do you not understand how sick this is? Do you really have no inkling? If you, Mr. Monokroussos, really think that your stunt last night was funny, then I truly and sincerely wish that someone shoves a sharp stick into your deepest wound, the way you did to me last night.

Comparing the WTC to unplayed games of chess is ... how shall I say it politely... highly inaccurate. We're talking about a game here. Entertainment. At most, a way to make a living for a select few. This is not life or death.

I was very fortunate enough not to lose anyone in the WTC, but I am still moved to tears when I think about it. On the same day in Zambia a train crashed killed 30 people. That too moves me far more than any game. Last week in my city a gang of 20 cowards beat up a new father. That is sick. Thirty-seven years ago my pet guinea pig died. That still means more to me than any amount of missed games or retirements in the chess world.

Because the world does seem to cycle in violence and tragedy, I think enjoying the light-hearted moments is so much more important.

Dennis provided a light-hearted moment. I didn't think the April Fool's joke funny, but it is not supposed to be funny. It was clever instead. And I got to enjoy another lecture by Dennis.

And as for some of the comments on playchess last night...People, develop a healthy perspective!!

btw, did you know that the word "gullible" is not in the dictionary. Go check. ;-)

I didn't see the show last night, but I have to say that the anonymous blogger above seems to be taking this a little too seriously. You can make a case for the non-match to be "the worst tragedy in the history of chess", and I won't argue that. If you believe that that is fine.

But really, the key word here is chess. If you think that the worst tragedy ever in chess even remotely compares to the 9/11 you must really not be seeing reality in the way that most other people see it. I don't go around claiming that getting beaten in fourteen moves in the May of 2001 compares to the tsunami, and really I'm just fine with there never being a unified world champion if it means that there will never be anything like 9/11 or the tsunami again.

Chess should be about fun. If you take it too seriously, you are really doing yourself a disservice. If you play chess or look at master games for a reason other than leisure (unless you are one of the few people like Dennis that can try to earn money by imparting knowledge on others, or one of the even more rare people that can play chess to earn a living) then I think that you need to look at the priorities of your life.

About Me

I'm a USCF master (current rating 2352) and a once and hopefully future senior master (peak rating 2434), but my time in chess these days is dedicated primarily to training juniors and others to achieve their own successes in our great game.
For fun, I also teach philosophy; for a challenge, I'm trying to complete my doctoral dissertation!